Red Gina, or, as her mother had named her way back then, Yevgenia Rosselini (She kind of looked like a young Gina Lollobrigida, and not so much like a half russian half sicilian genetic freak she had been for all of her school life. Having been saddled with an exotic russian first name that meant descended from nobility was such a relief when Tina, Charly and Mo’ banded together, and held your head into the toilet) woke up with a hangover, as the alarm clock hammered its metal song.
A swift flailing of the arm mashed it against a far wall. The radio was softly playing, way out of reach, and found a packet of the cigarettes she had liberally distributed across the apartment.Lucky strikes. Not the worst ones, but also not the best.
She grunted, very unladylike, Put one of the coffin nails in, and lit up her first cigarette of the morning before she was even out of bed.
Still sleep drunk, she looked to the full length mirror at the end of her “goblin cave”, and sat on the bed, reaching for a paper cup from last nights take out as an emergency ashtray, while she kicked her brain into first gear.
She thought about how much things that changed stayed the same.
She was now 26 years old, was out of college for a full two years, and had even begun making headway for her repayment of the college loans she had taken out. She lived on her own, held a modestly nice apartment in the city by herself, yet she still thought about herself as a goblin. A hideous, overweight goblin with ugly hair, and way too many pimples. She knew, in a practical way, it had never been her fault, and she should not be too hard on herself. She took the hand that had been dealt. And right now, it was finally at the point where she could say that she was starting to be happy.
In the mirror, for a second, she had seen her old self. Not the spindly, kind of fashionably slim woman that she knew from her drivers license, but her real self. Still 11 years old, dressed in clothes that her Sicilian father had sworn up and down “made her look like a principessa”, but that were mostly from the last century or so forth. Even her Russian mother participated, forcing her to wear hideous long laid-off shit , things recycled from her millions of aunts, that guaranteed she made no friends. Had they been trying to get her to hate the world? Because as far as she was concerned, back then, it had been working.
Her one love had been music. What else was a 13 year old girl with more fat rolls then friends supposed to do? Classic rock, grunge, things that her parents' generation shoulöd have listened to. The doors. Nirvana. You had to like something. So, she had gotten into the long forgotten art of goth grunge. Bully fodder. Worse than cutting herself, because at least Becky Who cut herself now got to talk about herself.
With a mother that thought gluten was a food group, a father that she could not say no to when he took it as a personal insult when she did not finish her plate of italian food, and having entirely the wrong body shape for the cool and gaunt look, she was just fat and pimply and pale. NOt a winning combination.
Plus, she shopped unironically at Hot Topic, because what else were you supposed to do when your parents did not believe in even letting her have her own gadgets, much less something as simple as an allowance? Some of her aunts and uncles (one of the very few rewards of being half russian half Sicillian was that she had a larger family then most) always made sure she had some money, even against her parents wishes, and when her parents tried to tell her that she was not getting any money, to not make her part of the decadent society, oh, she had rebelled. The problem was, most things that properly rebelled cost money. More than she had.
Her favorite uncle came into her life when she was 15. He just showed up on her doorstep one day, kissed her on the head, slapped her mother on the ass, small, fat, looking like a caricature from one of the early comics that her teachers spend hours letting them analyze, of how people displayed a greasy italian mobster. OH no, children, stereotyping people is wrong. What, the class bully victim with the target on her big fat back is culturally italian? Let's spend an hour discussing what stereotypes about Italian people were, and why they were bad. Thank you, teacher, not enough that the kids made fun of her for her weight and her hair, now they had historically correct paint by numbers advice.
Her mother just rolled the eyes, and went for the percocet drawer, her dad was strangely hesitant to be as direct to him as he was to others, and this was how she she got to know uncle “è stato qui tutto il pomeriggio”, or “Riggio”.
Purely by herself, she knew, on a rational level, that nobody called their kid “Pomeriggio”. She had been in the same class with a Chastity, Temperance, and Crystal, all of them classically beautiful but with long hair, the latest clothing, and entirely enough allowance…Chastity got knocked up before she had finished highschool, Chastity was selling her ass for pills, and Crystal…. Lets just say the absent father genes were strong by themselves, but the career as a stripper was pre programmed. She would have murdered to have real problems, an interest, something to blame it on, perhaps even Therapy because of her fucked up childhood….….
But the truth was, nobody cared. They did not get why she yearned for just some kind of edge.
Except Uncle Riggio.
She smiled, put the cigarette out, and stood up, stretching. When she was young and fat, she had a massive crush on him, but there was never anything sexual. It was just that her young girl mind, there were two classes of people. Class one were her father and her mother, and all the other immigrant children of conservative families. They tried their best to fit in. The country club? You had to go there, despite half the grownups talking about the “fucking jersey italians”, or “jersey royalty”. Was it her fault where her parents came from?`It was when she had it up to here with one of the kids that had called her Jersey Gina, and her father had taken her aside and explained to her that the kid came from a family with a lot of pull in the business, and her mother had told her that gina was such a lovely name, while swilling more wine…
Only Uncle Riggio had listened to her, as he had always done. Jogging suit , gold chain, gold teeth, just sat there and listened. Had not tried to tell her how it was, or what she had to think… Just had listened to her, and said, and had finally said, “Well, she fucks goats. ”
She never really knew how or what, but there had been this strange intensity around Uncle Riggio, as he had told her, that this could be resolved…. But she had to do something for him…
Her heart had beaten so fast, as she had imagined the older man forcing herself on her, finally giving her an outlet on which to blame it all…. She was not even sure she would have been entirely against it. She knew this was fucked up, that it was really messed up….
But he had never even acknowledged it. Just told her, Things could be done, but it would take time.
She vaguely remembered the screaming matches her father and Uncle Riggio had in the kitchen, talking in their Sicilian language, that was way beyond what she learned in the church's Sunday school. Shields, about bloodlines, about grandfather…. She had never known much about the actual Italian side of her family, and she was sure that with a lot of uncles and aunts, there was any room left for a grandfather.
She stepped out of the shower, and wrapped herself in the large towel that she had gotten from one of the big hotel chains. She had not paid for it. UUUH, she could be bad.... Now,. somewhat clear headed, she walked over into her small kitchenette, cigarette number four already burning, and switched on the radio.
“There will undoubtedly be a way to do it… there will be fucking people, you know…The fucking public will just realize, electric car batteries are just too small, like, what next, are they gonna put an electric chip into the battery, that just says, this car now exclusively works with this battery? I tell you , toots, greta Fucking Thunberg can open her fucking mouth, that is a girl that has not been beat enough. ”
She turned the radio up, and opened the old fridge, full with condiments, spices, a bit of toast bread, and some takeout containers. It was a quirk of hers, she realized, that had started with Uncle Riggio’s letters.
He had been the only one that had listened to her, really listened. Not like the kids at school, who only pretended to listen, until it was their turn to speak. OOOh, she had a lot to say about those kinds of kids. They were all friendly when it came to talking about heritage, and about culture, until someone else then the most preppy girls in school were supposed to speak…. Then it was back to them, just changing the goal.
All that Uncle Riggio would say to this would be, “N’un miriri e sbiriri”, in a bit. And then he would patiently build her back up again, when people tried to exclude her, or when someone called her too “white”, and would tell her how back in his day, the most beautiful actresses used to murder for hair like hers. Back then, it had not meant much, but as she grew older, she started to get what benefits it had to have a mane of nearly indestructible black hair on her head. IT had volume, it had spring, it had bounce, it looked wavy or straight, with just a bit of product…. Never split ends, never endless courses of product,. Just shampoo, water, and finish.
She knew it was inappropriate, but she loved how he talked about violence. Just, you know, “and then, the lady cooked the bitch in a stew pot, and fed her fat ass to the fucking tourists. Must have been a right Mappazzone, right? ” Then, it was back to pulling out some switchblades, and cutting oranges. Then it was getting drunk and railing against anything that threatened his right to say what he wanted when he wanted…
The word to describe Uncle Riggio was “unapologetically himself”.
Everything the man had done was unapologetic, and so different then her own family. They walked through life as if they were in danger of being a bull in a chinashop, throwing down something expensive. Did you just use a bit of italian? Weren’t you born in Jersey? Oh, sorry, my bad, gee, didn’t think of that. Your daughter has a weight problem, and is the size of a small elephant? Oh, well, haha, body positivity, health comes in so many sizes and shapes…
Uncle Riggio had been the only one she knew that wore his weirdness as a badge. Gangers that her father lowered his hat for, and tried not to look too hard at? Uncle Riggio was quick with calling the Cholo Frijoleros, The black guys the N word with a hard R, and if an asian person even looked funny, oh, he had words for this. And the strangest thing happened, despite all the preachings of her classmates, and family….
Despite what the political crowd told her, they backed down. Without a doubt. There was no outrage, there were no “How dare you”’s, there was just the silent look of panic, as an old man was ready to throw down over something as minor as getting cut off in traffic. He never got in so much as a single second of trouble.
And on a very visceral level, she respected that. The mere idea of a Karen telling her father that “he better speak english, else it’s cultural appropriation” shocked him so much that he lowered his head, apologized, and followed. Just to have it easy.
The same with her mother. Here was a woman who in her own way way accomplished, who had made something out of herself, but who smiled away the pain it caused her when some ladies of the upper middle class called her jersey trash, and in the same breath, chided her for not getting that “because she was not american”.
Her mother had her own ways of dealing with that. Surgery and Percocet, and lots of wine.
She remembered the first time she had shown her writings to her mother, and she had sat her down and explained to her that in today's day and age, she had to study STEM, and she had to work double as hard as any man….
The irony of her preaching as to what a growing girl had to, as a staunch feminist from the edge of her percocet couch, was lost on her. It was a sort of crab bucket mentality, “we had it hard so you can have it easy, you better appreciate how hard we have had it, and thank me on hands and feet for it.”
Only Uncle Riggio had read her stuff, and had told her, “I don’t know half of what you are writing about, but you finally got a head on your shoulders. ” He had put on his reading glasses, and had studied the tiny electronic screen for the longest time. She knew he was less educated then both her mother and her father, and had been in some rough times, but he had sat down, and had spent the hour to read through all of what she had put down, in her little bad writing, just to really talk to her.
She had felt closer to this relative stranger then to her own parents.
Yevgenia shook her head, and filled a glass with orange juice, no pulp. Making her way over to the one comfortable chair, she let herself fall in its soft embrace, and while lighting cigarette Number 6, she checked social media and email on her company phone.
It had come to a shock for her when Uncle died. She was 18 then, and in her last year before college. She had looked forward to nothing in particular, because there was nothing to look forward to. Everything was planned out for her. College with 20, one that her parents approved of, stateside, find herself a husband, someone with a crew cut, and a popped collar. If her parents had anything to say about it, he would also have a name like Brad, or Chad, or some other name, blonde, classically handsome….
And then the only thing that had kept her company was taken from her.
They said it had been Uncle Riggio's drunk driving. Everyone had stories about drunk driving, and about Uncle Riggio not being the most careful…. The problem for her was, she had seen him take her in cars. His cars, plural, had always been adventures. Not the polished BMW of her dad, but a series of tiny rust buckets , held together with duct tape and screws, enough rust to give her tetanus just by looking at them wrong, and ashtrays that had been overflowing. She had loved those small weird cars, that just seemed to appear where old italian men drank grappa. . Italian classics, he had called them, “Because we didn’t have no muscle cars like the fags, wee had the cars of the working men. ”
That was when she saw the other side in him. Not the rough side, but the side that he let no one see. When people he knew were around, he was a fool, a buffoon, that could not parallel park to save his life, and mostly she had to drive him, because he could not be trusted to not have road rage…. But the few times that he had driven her in the mountains, and in the winding passes, to look at colleges…. That was like watching a Manta Ray drive. No wasted fuel, no howling of the engine, just perfect, perpetual control. It was like day and night. She could sleep during those drives, and would wake up feeling like she just rested in the lap of some giant warrior, or some pirates ship.
That sort of driver, she realized, was not simply wasted because of some drunk driving.
They had sat her down, and explained to her that her favorite uncle had been involved with some very bad people.
Like if she was 13. She had eyes in her head, you know, thank you very much, and they were working.
She knew it was not normal to talk to policemen all the time, and be asked what her uncle had done on that and that day. That did not happen that much. She had learned and figured out that having to say the words “if you are asking where he was, he was here on the couch watching TV yelling racial slurs at the news readers” was not something that was a habit. Nor was Uncle giggling like mad, patting her head, and handing her 100 dollars every time she had to do it.
The letters had not stopped as well.
It had been his idea to write her the letters in advance, he had one year just told her. “In case I get drunk, and forget”. Not normal in the least. Nor was the name the letters were sent under, which he had refused to elaborate. He had insisted that since she had known him only when he had shown up, she only got to call him “Uncle Riggio”.
There was “hey, what uncle Tony are we talking about, uncle Tony with the nose hair or uncle Tony that has the restaurant?” That was pretty quickly answerable, as each Uncle Tony had done something bad that had displeased the family, usually something that was so bad they used it for years to identify him….
And then there was “And who was Uncle Carcagnosso”? She had tried to get info, hanging around her aunts, or the older members of the family, but they had always evaded the question.
For her, it was a death like he would have wanted it. She had shelved her rebellious phase, just for her Uncle Riggio, and had shown up in a traditional floor length black dress, with a veil for the funeral. He had never minded when she had not gotten along with people, so she had just sat there, with the coffin, and enjoyed the last few moments of peace and quiet. Nothing could have stopped her from smoking the entire time, and it raised a few eyebrows. Butz by then, People were all too happy to just let her be, if it meant they could deal with the “good” part of the family.
The summer after, the letters started again.
But now, it was as if her letters were sent with an invisible hand guiding them. She had a vague notion that similar letters had been disappeared by her family, but somehow, the letters showed up in their mailbox just when she was going out, or when she had come back from going out. It spooked her when it happened once, it started to be less terrifying when she realized that this was just one of Uncle Riggio's last jokes.
Letters that told her that she had looked so pretty at the funeral. And he would have liked to have shared a cigarette with her. Letters that told her of another side of the family, but refused to elaborate too much, out of respect for her father. Secrets that she had turned to action, like, when her evil aunt was giving her a hard time, knowing exactly why she did it.
This did not make her very popular, and finally, with 18 years of age, she had her moment of rebellion, just as she had given up any sort of hope of ever making a break from her family.
She knew what the signs meant the older members made when she walked by. When she looked at them funny. When they pissed her off. When she knew some bit of buried family lore, that she had no way of knowing…. In reality, she just used what was in the letters. And what a wonder, people shut up and let her be.
That was the first time they had spoken to send her to “Palermo”, in hushed tones, as if they were talking about special schools for the criminally insane.
And this was when the letter had arrived that had changed so much for her. It was a day before her 21.th birthday.
It was written on good stationary, and it had been one of the ones that she got with eerie accuracy. In it, Uncle Riggio had laid out that he had some stuff stashed away.
Stolen story; please report.
She did exactly as the letter had instructed her, mostly, because Uncle Riggios letter had never ever been wrong. She even added the handwritten note, as Uncle Riggio had suggested. “Venice called, I answered”. Later on, she did wonder why her family never tried to find her. A lot later, she would understand.
She packed two sets of clothes, some toiletries, and the few things she treasured, and took the bus to the airport, where she followed the instructions, and took the Fiat that had sat for 4 years in long term parking. The key from the Letter fit perfectly.
Like a sort of demented scavenger hunt, she got the road trip she always wanted. Away from her family. And following a scavenger trail that showed a little too much understanding of who she was.
Like, the Fiat itself.
She looked out of the window, and saw it sitting in the parking lot, its rust color making it stand out even with the run down street. It looked to all the world like a car that had everything that would keep any kind of sane person away from even considering jacking it.
The first inkling she had ever had that something was a bit too close for comfort was the CD system. She had discovered it as soon as she had pulled the car out of the parking lot, and had pulled into the first destination she had wanted to go.
She had nearly crashed the fiat, as the surprisingly good soundsystem played “Riders on the storm”. A quick check on the side of the road confirmed that there were 24 CD’s loaded in, each of one of her favorite groups, or things she had full of pride presented to her uncle. The old fool had remembered all of them, and must have had this planned.
In quick succession followed the discovery that the trunk contained, under a load of dirty laundry (lots of training suits, undershirts, a couple of cold chains, and some boxers in Uncle Riggio's size ), and below some empty shopping bags, almost 100.000 dollars in cash, a loaded handgun with four magazines, and a small collection of knick knacks that were not immediately clear to her. But the most important thing fell into her lap when she had searched for a mirror.
Two small, insignificant little black notebooks, filled with Uncle Riggio's near indecipherable handwriting, that was worth more than all the things she had possessed in her life.
They told her , in a series of long, rambling words, what Riggio had been up to before he came into her and her family's life.
She had an idea of her Father having been … a person before he got her. She knew that under the utterly boring, bowing, and ashamed man, there was a guy before he met her mother, that was fun and very very attractive. That was just the deal with parents in general. You always suspected that they used to be “wild and out there” at some point in their lives, that they were wild and rebellious. She just knew her dad as her dad, and her mom as her mom, but both had a life before her. Both had been young once as well.
She had no idea how much there had been about Uncle Riggio that she had not known. Most Italian families had this one aunt or uncle, that you never asked precisely what he had done in the past. Mostly, out of a fear that the happy little uncle could get a flashback.
Most of those uncles had been in prison for minor things, and tried to make it as glamorous as possible. Most aunties too. You're going to jail for 12 months, because of drunk driving, just did not have the ring to it. It was, on its own, an honorable system. You could screw up, as badly as you wanted, everybody had in their past. You could make of that whatever you wanted.
Only Uncle Riggio had been the real deal.
She guessed the old fool that never had the time to settle down and be happy with anyone but cheap women and cheaper booze was something more than he had seemed when she saw him in an old picture, arm in arm (but without most of the weight she had come to expect, and considerably younger) with another man. On the back, someone had written with faded ink, “thank you for a summer I will never forget. 1976 was one hell of a year. ”
The man her uncle had his arm wrapped around bore a stunning resemblance to Whitey Bulger. She checked. It was.
As she settled down, in a Roadside Motel she had rented for a week somewhere in Montana, just her, her cellphone, a cheap laptop, and Internet connection through an open hotspot, she could piece together More and more of the man her uncle had been.
Because she found the letters where they were stored. Letters, photos, caches….
Her uncle had ruffled a hole of a lot of feathers, back when he was young. Had gone to a lot of dirty work, and had helped a lot of people clean up a lot of things. For her, it was like a puzzle piece after a puzzle piece.
The letter with instructions did not even come as a sort of surprise.
Written as to no one in particular, it held the instructions as to how to make certain things right. Arrange flowers for certain graves… Make sure certain people paid for what they had done…
And at the end, a suggestion… IF she (she knew she was meant by the way her uncle talked in the letters) would do all of this, there would be more than enough left over to serve as wage for the time she had spent at his behest. Plus, he heartily encouraged her to pursue a career in writing.
Other girls she had known drove after graduation to a backpacking tour around the world. Got a light summer job. Maybe partied.
She drove a rusty piece of shit Fiat from one end of America to the other. Fulfilling the wishes of a long dead Uncle. He never mentioned the people that had helped him, been kind to him, or had helped him, but the people that had wronged him…. He mentioned them in excruciating detail.
And for one glorious summer of her life, she followed in the footsteps of a dead man.
The Fiat, to its credit, made it exactly as far as Seattle. Then, it just spluttered, died, and did not want to start again. When she had stepped out, after having rolled it as far as she could, all she did was take her now fairly lighter duffle bag in her one hand, her cellphone in her other, and just a pair of doc martens on her feet. She did not need a priest to explain this to her, or a nun.
When the soft wind blew in from the sea, bringing with it the gentle smell of saltwater and fish, of car fumes and a mass of screaming people, blowing towards the east, she knew that somewhere, out there on the clouds, a very jogging suit gold chain wearing, grappa drinking and in four languages cussing italian gangster made his way back home.
Within 15 minutes, she had a place to stay that did not look too intently at the fact she did not have a credit card, liked to pay the rent in cash, and had no problem living in “the bad parts”. Her year had told her how easy it was to “fall through society”, and her contact with the few friends that Uncle Riggio had kept had made certain things easier, things that were outside of the experience of many normal people. .
No longer forced to eat her mothers cooking, her clothing size had dropped, and the fat little girl that had started the journey now stood in awe next to the wellbuilt young woman. She had the world at her fingertips, and did not look that much different. Her hair was short, she wore her jeans with pride, and she could even look at Pizza again. She had also had a crash course of the most successful scams, manipulation tactics, and enough psychology to make sense of it all.
So, after she had towed the car to the garage (she loved the little Rust Bucket), and had paid a mechanic under the hand to fix it up, she had begun to add one more thing to the list of a job, to really make a bow on it.
She had started to make her digital career.
The issue had never been to leave it as it was. Her uncle had never been one of those people that took a liking to gadgets, or similar modern timesavers. For him, it had always been what he knew, he used.
He had never known the internet.
She carried most of the really bad cases to forums, subreddits, and similar places, where unsolved crimes were discussed. The people there were tenacious, wild and obsessed, and she had more than enough material to put them on the right track. Within weeks, the first heads rolled.
She finished dressing, cute, but not too cute, legere, but not too legere, somewhere in the middle between “I am woman, hear me roar”, “I sleep with my feet hanging from the doorframe” and “I am actually female”.
She grabbed her combat boots (a habit from her year of adventure), her purse, and her keys, and swept the apartment with a last round of gazes. Everything that was supposed to be off, was off, everything that was supposed to be put away, was put away. IN the mirror in between the rooms, she completed the ritual by putting on the bits of makeup she could. It had become her ritual.
She finished it up by one last look in the mirror, and putting on her high capacity belt. She was the niece of a famous Italian killer, but that did not mean some street thug did know that. On the belt were a few items that were just… laying around. A telescopic baton, to break fingers and remove teeth, a leatherman, because you never knew how creative plier work was until you read the personal notes of a mafia hitman (he had an entire chapter of the white book dedicated to “dentistry”), and a taser with enough juice to make a suspect forget (the book said, if possible, against the temple, and to use the entire charge, because it was impossible to prove). Plus, a couple of kinds of gaudy rings, the sort that had been popular in the 80’s. Her uncle would have laughed, called her crazy, and much worse, but in the end, if she walked around with a self defense knuckle duster, she would have raised attention that she did not want.
She DID have a bit of a problem with the police and police brutality (she considered it a matter of honor to be “against the cops”), but she had more of a problem with getting raped by some street wannabe. Her uncle had been “in enthusiastic detail” on how to make sure a person that laid hands on you did not survive the attempt. And, you could not be charged for homicide.
Like pepper spray. She was not aware that the standard self defense stuff came in cans that looked a LOT like the cans of bear mace. And that once a subject stopped screaming, because of the chemical reaction, all you had to do was get plenty in his hair and keep spraying. Empty the entire can, even if he is down and no longer moved, straight in the face. She would have never gotten it by herself, because the articles online did not tell you, that in this case, a panic reaction set in, and something called lufthunger made it excruciatingly painful as a way to die.
You could kill an attacker by a thousand different ways, just in case you didn't know. “I am sorry, I am just a stupid girl and I did not realize his screams were in panic because the mace had rendered him blind and slowly suffocating” got you a very much reduced sentence. The opposite had been in her consciousness for a while. She had known some “alternative friends of hers” that were legitimately not healthy, but as long as they took their medication, they were fine. Hell, she knew there were a few too many things wrong with her, that she had not told her therapist, but she did not let it all out. She kept that shit locked up.
Uncle came to the forefront of her mind. “If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime. ” She had appended the one herself.
“Fuck about, find out. ”
A very utilitarian worldview, but one that Gina, as her drivers license read now, followed. IF some fuckhead had a psychotic episode with her at the center, she accepted that. It happened. Don’t feel bad about it. Happens to the best of us.
The thing was, she could have a psychotic episode as well, after screaming, crying, taking the first dozen hits or so…. Only then, there were the extras on her high capacity belt, and in her absolute terror and confusion, she would just forget how to use certain things, like emptying an entire can of bear mace into someone's face, using her taser against someone's temple till it had no more juice, just accidentally putting his head down on the sidewalk in such a way he was turned into a quadriplegic for the rest of his life…
She was out the door, after one last sweep of her place, and on her way down the stairs, when she bumped into Lars.
Lars, the eternally sunny tempered, slightly muscular, californian. He was tall, lean, classically good looking, was a star in the track and field team, and was entirely without a single flaw. Lars was also entirely the kind of man her parents would have drooled over, so no matter how nice he was, or how much he obviously was into her, it was not his fault, but she would not even give him the time of day.
He also had been the reason why she had signed up for the University of Washington, for journalism classes.
At first, it had been one of those self starter grifts from the black book. If you are longer in a city, start signing up for a fitness studio, so you stay in shape, a university, so you can enjoy the cheap student perks… Hey, just sign up for one class per semester, and enjoy all the perks student life brings, what was wrong with that? Not having to cook herself, but being able to eat nutritious meals a couple of times per day that were not takeout? To her, it seemed very acceptable.
That had been one of the first things she could do that was not for a bigger goal, not for another person, but for her. She liked being a student, it gave her a purpose. It was easier to organize a day around certain “have to attend” functions, then to be entirely by herself. She knew it was entirely voluntary, and most of the other young adults her age would scream about the “huge opportunity” she had wasted, about how the money that was better spent resting in a bank account, but she liked it. One class per semester had morphed into two, and before she had known it, she had her bachelors.
She , not the tall, moderately good looking woman with an Asymmetrical Pixie cut with Temple Shave that she had paid 20 bucks for to a hair cutting student, but the fat pimply faced Girl Goblin that knew precisely that under normal circumstances Lars would have never ever given her so much as the time of day back in the day brushed past him, as he was still struggling for words to say, and down the stairs. Sometimes, it was fun to feed her inner goblin, even if it was just herself at 13, throwing a temper tantrum.
On the way to the car, she fished out her cellphone, and checked the broadcasts again.
Few people had gotten a job straight out of school. Mother Jones, the New Yorker, …. Most of her classmates had their sights set high, and accepted to have to downgrade. She could talk the talk, and walk the walk, but her tastes were … different.
The RED network.
The equivalent item from her fathers days would have been to hire up to buzzfeed. It did not matter that you bought yourself a passable publishing crew, and
True to her bachelor, she had done her homework. Her expertise had helped her out. It was a network worse than the traditional pusher networks of the web 2.0. They had started like many others with making lists and such, and generating content, and had been an instant hit. Everybody, and their mother, bought the loose cannons of the RED network. They were journalists for hire, clickbait caballeros, Yellow page journalistic yahoos, the same as many of today's most profitable news networks had been, only from the right wing.
They had their mommy bloggers that you could hire by the dozen. They had their average joes, that would come from the click of a button, they INVENTED the concept of a protester for hire, (she had that checked out as soon as she started. True to form, the guy that organized the paid protests against that company paid for by that company was there, on the payroll, receiving a salary), they pioneered struggle sessions, they invented political ragebait….
She was a bit sad about that one. She had always assumed that there really was that much stupidity. She used to get mad alongside her fellow students, when yet another of the spineless politicians did not bow to the common sense argument of gun control (she was fairly certain that the gun she owned was clear of any fingerprints. Or serial numbers. Or documentations… Gun control was for the people who were too lazy to get creative). Then, she had looked into what were the definitions of terms such as automatic, semi-automatic, and single shot. And had discovered that a lot of the so called very intelligent, and highly respected politicians of her side seemingly never got around to preventing those minor mistakes, mistakes that took just an explanation of 3 minutes, maybe a demonstration, and instead, intentionally used bad arguments. With the immediate result that every “hot take” able reporter published a piece of “Look at those dumb dumb anti gun people, lol, they are very much dumb indeed” leading to a predictable reaction…. It was trolling, or, as she had come to learn, rage baiting for hire. Intentionally getting things wrong for the purpose of engagement.
And fresh out of university, she had gone to her hiring negotiation, and had predictably not done too badly. They had not expected her to sign up. Her main reason was the ability to mostly work from home when the amount of preppy young faces was too much for her, the good pay, and the fact that her direct boss had tried to stare more at her ass then at the articles. Her editor just signed off on her posts, because they usually brought enraged liberals to the sites, which in turn manifested the conservatives to “defend the right of people to tell it like it is”
The kicker was, what she did after hours.
By day? She was a diversity hire, from the long line of fresh faced preppy kids, that could write you 20 pages of personality quizzes a minute, but did not have a journalistic bone in their body, to at least make sure someone could do actual journalism.
You could sadly go by the first names. If you had someone named Todd, Ashley, Brad, Brittany, James, Chad, Kyle or Kevin, Chances are that they were here to make up lists like “20 signs that your dog was a princess in her last life” or “to 20 Cities to visit in europe. ”
If the first name was Mohinder, Rakesh, Jasmin or Gina, Chances are that they were part of the ghostwriting team. Their task was to polish up the publishing histories of Ashley, Chad or Kevin, to include actual points, and legible arguments. This way, it looked like Chad actually used his degree in Journalism, and in between 20 lists, posts about what happened on social media, he occasionally had a post of actual journalism, where he presented facts, not spin.
She was good at making troglodytes with square jaws and firm handshakes look good. She would have quit, but the money they offered was too good, especially after she had written that piece on Tom Brady, after “Mahk” from Boston had told her, in between flexing and drinking soy milk lattes with 17 and a half different pumps of various artificial syrups (She had once, out of spite, let him taste what proper cuban cafecito did. Mahk had to lay down for the rest of the day, and was later on diagnosed with dehydration, diarrhea, and stomach cramps. Everybody had supported Mahk, nobody had bothered to ask why she drank that stuff raw from a 2 liter thermos), that Tom Brady existed.
She had not felt good that day, had felt a bit feverish, so she had just used her time productively, and hammered out 8000 words on why Tom Brady was a traitor to the people of Boston, and should be thrown out of a window, with a rope around his neck. Surprisingly, instead of chastising her for overstepping the line, and calling her to order, Mahk’s heartfelt article won several prizes, and got her a raise because of the amount of people coming to the relevant sites.
She was a queen of every metric, because she could even imitate how several of her square jawed shaved chimps thought. That was what she did by day.
By night, she usually did her own research, and published the occasional article to make herself look good. It was back then when she got her “Special Responsibilities. ”
She had initially assumed that it would have been sexual in nature. She had nothing against that, as the goblin girl inside her still assumed that sex was something that happened to other people, but far from it. There were a few higher ups who were not too bad looking, and she would not have minded the occasional fling, especially if it came with a pay bump that seemed to be exclusively reserved for tall, blonde, at least double D#s, and surgery scars that were tastefully hidden (she had to think of her mother)….
They had given her actual work that was not to be published. Work that made it all acceptable.
They called it, “Giftschrank work”. She was familiar with the concept, and understood, that usually, you had to save some articles for a rainy day. Lets say, during the moon landings of Apollo 13, you were not entirely sure if the astronauts would come back. (She had written several think pieces about “But what if the earth is actually flat”) So, you wrote two articles, one jubilant for the triumphant return of the brave astronauts, one an obituary for (insert reason here), that went over their careers, brave souls extinguished in the prime of their life, yada yada yada, the world is sadder without them. Just so that when the return trip happened on a monday morning, by monday evening, the articles were ready.
Her “Giftschrank Work” was… Unusual. Even for her tastes.
She knew she was onlöy one of the people that researched things like that, and sometimes, she saw her research show up in another person's article. She couldn't care less about this. This was what she was used to as a ghostwriter.
BUt what bothered her was The stuff she never saw again. Mostly, it was criminal stuff. She was to put it bluntly fine with that. It was her area of expertise, and to fill time and pad her portfolio, she had reworked several of her revealing posts about corrupt politicians to fit the paper's format. Some algorithm must have picked them up. And assigned her the crime stuff.
But what worried her was the amount of legwork involved with these cases. Double homicide in Yakima. Talking with the local coroner to see what caliber of a weapon had been used. Nothing more.
That was not stuff that came up often, for her that was closer to stuff she read about in the occasional trashy spy novel she allowed herself, when it was the weekend, and no mysterious stranger had shown up to sweep her off her feet (she did prefer the ones with the villains. She could only stomach so much gruff but goody two shoes ex detectives that worked because they believed in the good in people, in peace on earth and for everyone a free eclair, and all that. She was more of a “Punisher” kind of woman, then cheering for the gender correct violence avoiding ethnically diverse trash like captain America…). Her work in those cases, that she did with a cup of coffee to her left and an overflowing ashtray to her right, in her comfy chair, was closer to human intelligence, muckraking.
Stuff that you hired professionals for. People that took trash home and went through it. Semi police work.
And never ever used in any of the local articles.
She had started to ask questions, and when her assignments turned special, she knew that she had struck close. Her motto was, if what she did was bullshit, she at least had to make sure she got paid.
When they had asked if she wanted to turn this into a full time career, she had not blinked a second too long, but had put a price tag on it that would have given her herself pause. For her, that was fantasy money. Hell, she enjoyed being able to pay taxes on that amount of money.
The faceless traditionally beautiful HR agent with E cup talents had just smiled, entered it, and said she would hear back from them. She had expected to be ghost writing for the rest of her life, living an easy existence in the shadow of lantern jawed conservative talking heads, making them care about at least somewhat human topics….
They had not even flinched, and just accepted.
And thus, a former goblin girl, a Non person that slipped through society with the ease of a long term fugitive from the law got to the greasy stuff. And compared to the stuff she had done before, this was worth all the endless talks. Because with what she knew now, she had been allowed to look behind the scenes just a bit. And she knew she wanted more.
They had opened the “Giftschrank” for her, and she had seen hundreds of cases like hers. And under the moniker “RED Gina”, they had let her loose, to find those connecting points, that made the cases make sense. This was better than pretending Juan, a hard boiled cartel member, would show up at her door, requiring a bandage and to be defended (she kept the car sized medical kit by the door. She was a realist, but you never knew…), Or maybe some triad woman, mysterious and beautiful.
Instead, she just passed and passed, through layers and layers. The algorithm looked over her work, and scored it, as if she was still writing articles for the network. Just the pay was better, and the hours were hers to work. She had once tried out just how much overtime the system would grant her, and had been shocked when she realized that 50 hours of overtime per month had been no problem.
She had found her rhythm, and had managed to climb up the stairs. Had managed to put the few courses of computer usage to good use, and had even written her own programs in a very very roundabout way.
Between her own intuition, that was scary accurate, the black and white book her uncle had left her, and the toolset the algorithm provided, she became very good. She walked blocks of Seattle, looking at historic murder sites, sites of gang violence, and home invasions, and picked out how she would have done it.
It changed when she, on a hunch, had managed to pierce together where the attackers of a gangland shooting would have gotten a fix job for an old Fiat. She had just written this off as a hoax, but the shop had burned out the next day.
She had asked to speak to a superior about this.
The system in her darkened apartment had been the only thing illuminating her nightly session. A thunderstorm had been going on over the city, bathing it in ghostlike light. She had expected everything else, and had her alternative plans ready.
She knew her skill as a Ghostwriter was worth its weight in Gold. She did not have a social life, did not have too many vices, did not fuck around, and was never too distracted by the outside world.
She would have expected anything.
A timid email, that her services were no longer in need, that she was to go back to writing politics articles for lantern jawed people with masculine names like Brad, having to look for real work, really anything.
She did not expect a call on her house phone, a number that she had kept non listed. A nice, older man on the other side, that asked her if she was free right now to take a ferry to Canada.
And with her heart beating to her chest, knowing that this was quite possibly the king of stupid ideas but she would never in her life forgive herself if she did not accept… she had stepped behind the wheel of the Fiat, and driven to the Ferry to Victoria.
Where a single person had waited for her. She had the vague idea that there were more guests on the ferry to victoria. Most of them looked the exact same way her black book had described it to her when someone was hiding a gun.
The man had been middle aged, maybe in his 40’s, small, wiry, and with an indescribable air of sadness. Wordlessly, he handed her the coffee, and turned. It was her precise blend, just the way she liked it. Then, he turned around, on leather shoes that sounded like they were not only hand made, but cost more then all of her apartment, and had just said, “you coming, Yevgenia? ”
It was her actual name, a name she had not used for years, not since she had asked an old jewish man in New York to give her a false ID worth 10.000 dollars. It was a classical midwestern accent. Something that was so American that it didn't even raise questions. He was invisible, with his suit and woolen coat, a bit better dressed then the usual drunkards on the ferry, but that was it. He was completely hidden in a mass of people, but when he walked, she felt that same clenching in her bowels as when they realized a wolf was walking next to them. They sat down on the front bench, and there she heard the words that would change her life forever. They were said without much pomp or bravado, just stated as if it was the most natural thing in the world that older gentlemen could just invite pixie haircut wearing girls out to coffee on boat trips.
“I have read your file, and I am impressed. Your work was consistently good, but also visionary. My name is King, just King. How would you like to work for First Light? “
It was out like that.
And this way, on a ferry to Canada, drinking coffee, all her questions were answered. NOt as requests, Negotiations, or anything else. Just a statement of facts.
This is how she began to work for First Light.